


Phantom Limb (The Supernumerary Remix)

by embroiderama



Category: White Collar
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Prison, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Neal was back in prison between Out of the Box and Withdrawal, Peter waited and worried and worked to get Neal released.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phantom Limb (The Supernumerary Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rabidchild67](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Phantom Limb](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/7974) by rabidchild67. 



> Thank you to Katy for the beta!

As much as he wasn't enjoying being suspended from work—separated from the welcome weight of his badge, barred from his own office—Peter knew that the situation for Neal had to be far worse. He'd argued with Hughes and the Marshals that house arrest with a radius of meters rather than miles was enough of a lockdown for Neal, but the arguments to put Neal back in prison quickly over-rode him. Hughes at least agreed that Neal should be kept in protective custody, and Peter had to bite his lip, swallow his frustration and say thank you.

Peter knew that solitary confinement wasn't a perfect solution, especially for a social animal like Neal, but the alternative was worse. Peter was almost certain that his suspension would be overturned as soon as he could get a hearing, and then he'd get Neal out again because beyond any friendship between them Neal had proven himself to be a useful tool and the Bureau wouldn't be able to resist putting him back in Peter's hands. From what Peter understood, the true damage from solitary took months or more to accrue, and Neal had always been resilient. But the dangers of throwing Neal in with the general population were more likely to be swift, sudden and permanent.

He knew the choices weren't so simple, but Peter consoled himself that it was better for Neal to be bored than for him to be beaten or stabbed or worse. He did a good enough job of convincing himself Neal would have little trouble making it through his time in solitary that he didn't feel like a liar when he told El that Neal had been transported back to prison but he'd be okay. He told El that he'd keep tabs on Neal, and that was true enough. One of the guard supervisors was a friend of a friend, and even without his badge Peter was able to get the man to agree to update Peter weekly—sooner if there were any sudden changes in Neal's behavior. It was better than nothing.

The first two check-ins sounded positive enough that the knot of worry in Peter's chest loosened, and he smiled when he told El that Neal was keeping himself busy. He was exercising and making art with the the space and materials available to him, and Peter knew he was working to keep himself sane. The second check-in was consistent with the first, and Peter's reinstatement hearing was only two weeks away. He told himself that Neal would be fine.

The next check-in call came two days early, catching Peter while he was out walking Satchmo. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk when he saw the name on the caller ID and answered only when a woman with a ridiculously large baby carriage grumbled as she pushed past him.

He picked up just before the call rolled to voice mail. "Jackson?"

"Burke. You wanted me to call if something changed with your boy in here."

Peter shook his head at the idea of Neal being _his boy_. "I did. What's going on?"

"Well, the crap he was doing before, the calisthenics and scribbling on the walls, he stopped it all a few days ago."

"ALL of it?" Peter bit out. "And nobody told me before now?"

"It didn't look like much on the shift reports. I mean, he's not making noise, making a mess or trying to hurt himself or anybody else which makes him more or less a non-issue as far as the staff here is concerned."

"Okay. Okay, what _is_ he doing?" Peter sighed and reached down to scratch Satchmo's ears.

"Not much. He's in bed a lot, though I can't tell you if he's sleeping. His food's coming back barely touched. One of the guards heard him talking during his time in the yard, and he said it sounded like your man was having a conversation with an imaginary friend."

"Jesus." Peter looked around himself at the city, the park, the pedestrians, his dog, and imagined it all stripped away. This wasn't good.

"Thing is, this happens. Guys come in thinking it's no big deal and then they get depressed. We can send him to medical but I don't know that it would do any good."

"Hold off on that. I might have him out of there in as little as a week or two, but I'm coming out to see him. Tomorrow."

"I thought your boss wasn't too hot on you visiting your boy before you get your badge back?"

"I'll get it cleared. You'll make sure I can get in a visitation room with him tomorrow morning?"

"Sure, whatever."

Peter hung up, hoping he said some kind of thanks before disconnecting, and called Hughes' direct line. Even if OPR wanted to complain about it at his hearing, Peter was getting in to see Neal with his own eyes.

~~~

Neal, real and 3-D in neon orange, was both better and worse than what Peter had been imagining. He looked whole enough as he walked into the visitation room, if a little thinner and a little unkempt, but then Peter stepped in to greet him and warning bells clanging _wrong! wrong! wrong!_ went off in Peter's head. Peter would have expected a grin, a joke, a purposely casual sprawl on the bare wooden bench across from him; instead he got a man who wouldn't look at him, who sat sideways on the bench and leaned against the wall, eyes trained on the room's single window. The yellow cinderblock walls of the room didn't do anybody any favors, but Neal looked particularly washed-out, bags forming in the thin skin under his eyes.

Peter sat across from Neal, his hands open and empty on the battered tabletop. "They’re giving me a reinstatement hearing next week. After that, I can try and get you out of here."

Neal's gaze turned to Peter for a fraction of a second and then flicked back to focus on the window and the slices of daylight visible through the bars. He opened his mouth like he was going to speak and then closed it, still silent. The urge to shout at Neal roiled in Peter's belly, but he knew that would get him nowhere. Worse than nowhere.

"Diana’s still trying to track Fowler down. We’re not having much progress, but we’re plugging away," he explained, hoping that Neal was at least listening. "We’re going to get to the bottom of this, Neal." He smoothed his hand on the rough table-top and tried one more time. "El sends her love."

Neal finally turned to look at Peter, a brief flare of life in his eyes, but then he turned away, looking like a man trapped—trapped by more than a few weeks in prison. Desperate to get some glimpse at the Neal he'd worked with for months, Peter stood up and walked around the table. He took Neal's shoulders in his hands, careful not to be rough even as he wanted to shake words, answers, some kind of honest reaction out of the orange-clad ghost of Neal in front of him. He bent in close so that Neal couldn't look away and forced him into eye-contact. "Jesus, Neal, you gotta give me something."

Neal swallowed hard and shook his head. "Can I go?"

Peter wished he could say yes, wished he could take Neal home with him right then. "I'll get you home soon," he said, tightening his hands on Neal's arms. "I promise."

Neal's jaw clenched and relaxed. "Can I _go_?" he repeated, and Peter felt sick as he realized that Neal wanted to go back to his cell. He took his hands off Neal and stumbled on his own feet as he turned to call for the guard.

Neal stood placidly as the guard handcuffed him and then walked out of the room, never even glancing back at Peter. The distant, dead look he'd seen in Neal's eyes haunted him all the way back to Brooklyn. He sat at his dining room table, wishing for his desk at the office and all of the access that came with it. Finally, he picked up the phone and dialed June.

They exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes before Peter got to the first of his two purposes for the call. "June, of course you're in no way obligated, but if I can get Neal out with a similar deal to what we had before, would you allow him to rent the room from you again?"

"Of course, Neal will always be welcome. Life in this house is certainly less interesting without him around. Do you think you'll get him out of that place soon?"

 _Not soon enough,_ Peter thought, but he didn't want to have that conversation with June. "I hope so. June, do you ever see Neal's friend Mozzie."

"Perhaps from time to time."

"If you can, please get a message to him for me. Tell him he needs to go visit Neal, talk some sense into him."

June was quiet for a moment before replying. "I'll pass on the message."

"Thank you. I hope I'll have reason to see you soon."

"I hope for the same thing," she replied gently before disconnecting.

El came home hours later, when Peter's eyes were burning from scanning through endless PDFs of case law. She took one look at him and frowned, then sat down next to Peter, turned so that her knees bumped against his.

"Oh, hon. It was bad?"

"It was bad," Peter agreed, rubbing a hand over his face. "It's like he wasn't even there, not really. He was staring into space like he was on something, wouldn't hardly look at me or speak. In the end he asked to go back to his cell, like he didn't even care."

"Oh, no. Poor Neal!" Her eyebrows drew together, the look of concern that Peter never liked bringing to her face.

"I don't understand it. He's only been in there for three weeks, and I know it's not a good situation but he survived almost four years inside without being any less _Neal Caffrey_ than he was when he went in, and now he's just—" Peter spread his hands out in front of him and then sighed as El reached out to intertwine her fingers with his. "He's like somebody else."

"Hon, he's grieving."

"I know. I know, I just never imagined anything hitting Neal this hard." He looked down at his hands joined with El's and tried not to imagine having to let go forever. "I'm worried that maybe this is the thing he can't come back from."

"You're going to get him out of there," El replied, her face full of the certainty and resolve that always made Peter feel stronger. "And out here Neal's not alone. Just don't you dare tell him to cowboy up."

Peter laughed, a dry chuff that felt more like tears, and lifted El's hands to his lips to kiss them.

~~~

With his reinstatement hearing behind him, his badge and gun back in place, his office around him and his desk under his hands, Peter made getting Neal released from prison his priority. He had a hell of a lot of other things that needed his attention, but his team was solid and everybody understood that some things were more emergent than mortgage fraud and even art theft.

As soon as he had the terms worked out and signed confirmation in hand, Peter made the drive upstate. He thought that maybe the news that he'd be getting out in just a few more days would get through to Neal, give him some hope, wake him up from the daze he was living in. When the woman at the desk told him that Neal was refusing all visitors, Peter wanted to storm in there. He wanted to find Neal and take him home right the hell now, but even with his badge in hand he couldn't get past the desk. He thought about the possibility of working around Neal's refusal—a court-order, a summons, something—but by the time he could work any of that out Neal would be released anyway.

Unless he didn't accept the deal. But he had to accept the deal; Peter didn't want to imagine that anything else was possible. He left the paperwork in a manilla folder that the desk clerk stuffed into an envelope along with Peter's hastily written sticky note. _I'll be back here in three days, and I don't want to have to tell El and June that I'm coming back alone. Please sign the papers._ It was the closest to begging that he could allow himself to go.

The next afternoon, Peter received a fax of the signed paperwork, Neal's signature scrawled on all the right lines, and the knot of worry in his gut loosened up just enough to let him focus his energy on the serial bank robbery case the team had been working on in his absence. It was exactly the kind of case that Neal could help them with, but Peter didn't want to make any concrete plans about involving him because if the Neal who walked out of that prison was anything like the Neal of a week ago he wouldn't be in any shape to work.

Peter sketched out a plan for using Neal to find the bank's weaknesses, but he also made Neal an appointment with one of the Bureau's counselors and prepared himself for the task of explaining to Hughes that they'd gone to such lengths to secure the release of a man who was _not_ ready to work. He visited June and picked up a garment bag with one of Byron's suits zipped up inside; she handed over Neal's favorite Fedora, her sharp gaze making it clear that she was holding Peter personally responsible for getting the hat to Neal in one piece.

Thirty-three days after the Marshals took Neal back to prison, Peter drove through the gates and walked inside, hoping that he and Neal were both done with the place for good. He passed the suit bag over to the desk clerk but held onto Neal's hat. He steeled himself for the possibility of Neal walking through that locked door with empty eyes above his vintage tie. Or worse, wearing whatever rumpled clothes he came in with, not even himself enough to bother with the suit. He'd make sure Neal was taken care of, no matter which version walked through the door, but Peter had to be honest with himself—he was really hoping to see the Neal he'd gotten to know, his friend.

Finally, the door swung open and Neal strode through, everything about his suit carefully in place and his eyes bright and sharp. He greeted Peter with the smile Peter had been expecting two weeks earlier, and if Peter could see the brittle edges to Neal's facade he thought that few other people would.

"Neal!" he said, stifling the unbidden urge to pull Neal in and hug him. "It's good to see you."

"It's good to see you too." Neal glanced away, just a brief slip, and Peter felt the weight of whatever had happened in the last two weeks.

There was no easy way to ask him about that disturbing visit and then his refusal to even meet, so Peter just stepped to the side and gestured at the Fedora that was sitting on an empty chair atop his briefcase. "I brought you something."

Neal smiled again, a real smile as he walked closer and reached out to pick up the hat. He laughed when he saw the tracker anklet that had been hiding under the hat. "I guess that's for me, too."

"Yes it is. New and improved model, they say it won't chafe as much as the old one."

"That's great," Neal replied dryly as he raised his left leg to prop his foot on the chair.

Peter closed the tracker around Neal's ankle and then patted his leg. "You ready to get out of here?"

Neal put his foot back down and smoothed out his suit jacket, which Peter noticed was not quite as snugly fitted as it had been the last time he wore it. "Absolutely. Put me to work."

They walked out to the parking lot side-by-side, and once they were inside the car Peter turned to look at Neal. "If you're not ready, I can get you some time. A lot of things have happened, I know, and it's okay if you need help."

"I'm fine. I was—" Neal went quiet for a moment and Peter held his breath. "I'm out now, and I've been bored to death so please tell me you have something going on that's more interesting than loan fraud?"

Peter sighed and started the car, guiding them toward the final exit from the prison grounds. "Well, we do have a case right now that's right up your alley."

He promised himself to keep an eye out for any cracks around the edges of Neal's facade, but for now Peter had to follow his gut and his gut said it was time to get back to work, for the both of them.


End file.
